More than 70 years after the Berlin Zoo forced Jewish shareholders out of its ranks, the institution is trying to come clean about its own dark chapter during the Nazi era, according to a report by the news agency ‘Agence France Presse’.
A historian is combing through thousands of names to identify members forced to sell their shares back to the zoo at a loss under the Nazis and has begun tracking down their descendants ahead of publishing her findings.
"Jews were very important for the zoo," said historian Monika Schmidt, who estimates up to a quarter of the zoo's 4,000 shareholders in the 1930s were Jewish. "But they were pushed out step by step by the zoo itself, before the Nazi state asked any institution to do those things," Schmidt told AFP. Zoo shareholders did not receive dividends, but their families enjoyed free entry and the prestige of supporting an important social institution. Their exclusion is just one example of how Jews were pushed out of public life in Germany during the 1930s and often stripped of their assets.
"Today, the zoo is just a zoo, with animals to watch," said Schmidt, with the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism in Berlin. "But in former times, the zoo was a very important meeting place for the city."
In 1938, Jewish shareholders were forced to sell their shares back to the zoo for less than their value, according to Schmidt. Now, she is comparing names in a post-war recreation of a shareholders' log to residence and restitution records in an attempt to identify former Jewish patrons. Commissioned by the zoo, Schmidt plans to publish the names and biographies in a book next year.
